Lyndon Johnson's war

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

History professor Hunt (Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, etc.) first encountered the "real Vietnam" in the early 1960s when, as a college student, he spent two summers in Saigon, where his father was stationed in the U.S. military mission. Expecting to find an endangered nation that could be rescued by can-do Americans, he instead saw a country engaged in a complex struggle that had already confounded the French. Now, 20 years after the war's end, Huntwho served in the Army but not in Vietnam, and who currently teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hillhas undertaken a "long-delayed exercise in exorcism," in which he examines why the U.S. became involved in Vietnam. The result is a scholarly, clearly argued work that presents the various decisions to increase American commitment as having been made neither by maniacal warmongers nor by righteous visionaries. Rather, Hunt contends, those decisionsfor good or illwere made within the context of the times, by leaders blind to the fact that an iron-willed enemy was prepared to absorb our worst blows until we, like the French and the Chinese before us, abandoned their land. Drawing on new documentation from Hanoi, Washington and the LBJ library in Texas, Hunt offers an intense, penetrating study that will likely inspire continued reasoned examination of the gestation of a national tragedy. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Hunt (Frontier Defense and the Open Door, LJ 3/1/74), who teaches history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written what is perhaps the shortest book available about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. In fewer than 145 pages, he provides a scant outline of major events surrounding this country's most divisive war. In this limited format, he merely reviews well-documented events that occurred throughout the Truman through the Nixon administrations; no new facts or conclusions emerge. It is difficult to imagine what audience would benefit from such a cursory treatment of a very complex topic. Those who know nothing about the war will be confused, while informed readers will be left wondering just what point the author is trying to make. All libraries will be better served by any number of other titles already on the shelf. Not recommended.Robert J. Favini, Bentley Coll. Lib., Waltham, Mass.

Jay Freeman

A generation after the withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam, the fault line dividing Left from Right remains unbridged in analyzing the debacle. The Right sees a loss of will, ascribing our failure to politicians, who forced the military to wage a "limited" fight, which handcuffed the proper prosecution of the war. The Left sees a failure borne of illusions of U.S. omnipotence and arrogance. Hunt, a prominent East Asian scholar, has written a compact, useful volume that clearly places him in the latter camp. He breaks no new ground here; the concept of a policy driven by rigid anti-Communism, arrogance, and naiviteregarding "nation building" is hardly original. David Halberstam, in "The Best and the Brightest", illustrated these flaws more extensively and eloquently. Still, Hunt's book has great value for the general reader. His portrayals of some of the critical but lesser-known men who gave impetus to our escalation are particularly striking. His spare but direct narrative style adds to the impression of a train rushing blindly onward to an inevitable crack-up.